Jim O'Donnell: While Northwestern is being battered, Fitzgerald should be screaming his innocence
THE LEGAL WAVES BASHING UP on The Enchanted Lakefront are approaching storm surge.
Northwestern University is under growing siege as reports of systemic hazing aimed at former student-athletes mount.
Its athletic department is on the cusp of multigenerational disgrace and diminishment. So too is the reputation of the school.
Against that stark backdrop, dismissed head football coach Pat Fitzgerald remains demonstrably guilty of nothing.
That is an extremely inconvenient truth that most of the howling media mob is straining to work around. Fitzgerald as the focal point of all things bad makes incomplete reporting and vacuous sports talking so much more flowing.
But currently, he is Josef K. in Franz Kafka's "The Trial." That is a man in a legal netherworld, charged with nothing but forced to traverse a bizarre gauntlet by arbitrary "authority."
There is one charge: Fitzgerald "should have known" what was going on layers below him in the NU football program. Maybe he also "should have known" if each of his 100 or so players were brushing their teeth each night before bedtime and having their pizzas delivered piping hot.
Kafka would shrug.
THOSE LEGAL WAVES TOOK ON further intensity Wednesday when attorneys Ben Crump and Steve Levin hosted a press conference in Chicago to confirm plans of filing suit against Northwestern and a trail of specific university connections. Fitzgerald is likely to be included.
Crump said that the two-firm attack already has 15 student-athletes claiming foul in three separate athletic programs at NU - football, baseball and (women's) softball.
Four former Wildcats were in attendance, all football players. They were: Lloyd Yates - a quarterback/wide receiver from 2015-17 who gave an extended interview to The Chicago Tribune this week - Simba Short, Tom Carnifax and Warren Miles-Long.
Words and phrases such as "hazing," "sexual abuse" and "civil rights" were thrown about just as purple confetti once was at NU homefield wins.
But no one pointed a specific finger at Fitzgerald.
ONE POINT THAT LEVIN EMPHASIZED was that stumblebum Northwestern president Michael Schill - one of the greatest disasters in the history of the proud university - has yet to release the full contents of The Hickey Report.
That was the document that followed a six-month investigation by attorney Maggie Hickey, commissioned by NU, that began last December.
In an executive summary released by the baffling Schill less than two weeks ago, the most damning charge against Fitzgerald dealt with that spurious legal concept of what he "should have known."
See how that stands up as a key point of offense or defense in a civil courtroom.
THE CONDUCT OF SCHILL SHOULD BE of urgent concern to Chairman Peter Barris AND Northwestern's Board of Trustees.
Since being brought in from the University of Oregon last year, the rookie president's performance has ranged from the benign to the currently calamitous.
He fired Fitzgerald three days after announcing a two-week suspension over the hazing allegations. His mid-weekend turnabout was purportedly influenced by instant student reporting in the school newspaper that lacked balance.
WHILE FITZGERALD GOT THE NU DEATH PENALTY, five years ago at Oregon, Schill had a much gentler handle on an OU Law School professor who hosted a Halloween party dressed in blackface.
Nancy Shurtz, who is white, later claimed she was merely making a statement about the lack of Black doctors produced out of Oregon.
Schill commissioned an investigation. According to credible media reports, 23 professors and other members of the law school staff demanded Shurtz's ouster, as did OU's Black Law Students Association.
Instead, in the end, Schill cited Shurtz's "learning intent" and "right to free speech."
Shurtz was placed on administrative leave during the investigation, but she remains on staff at the university.
THE BIGGEST HOLE IN ANY COUNTER OFFENSIVE by Fitzgerald remains the fact that he and lead attorney Dan Webb have yet to vociferously contextualize his role in any of the expanding charges against the NU athletic department.
Just as Schill's release of The Hickey Report is glaringly overdue, so too is a credible media stage featuring Fitzgerald and Webb.
His silence, in too many quarters, is being taken as proof of some sort of guilt.
Their priority is said to be negotiating a settlement of the close to $40 million still owed him on a contract renewal signed in 2021 and extending through the 2030 NU season.
That amount could be mere prelude if Team Fitzgerald gets its full act together and pursues defamation / diminishment of professional reputation assertions against Northwestern, select media and even any civil plaintiffs who would knowingly lodge false and malicious charges against him.
LAST WEEK, FITZGERALD AND WIFE STACY spent multiple hours cleaning out his office at Northwestern.
The chore was said to be somewhat painful and deeply personal. The couple attempted to remain upbeat throughout. One memento reportedly commemorated his arrival at NU in 1993.
That's when he was a freshman, merely a kitten from South suburban Orland Park on the depth chart. He was, in all probability, subject to whatever sort of plebe hazing dominated back in that era.
Now he's 48 years old and an icon in free fall. He's too young to quit altogether and too freshly tattered to imagine generating any new glory on par with what once appeared certain to be his legacy at Northwestern.
IF FITZGERALD'S POSITION IS RIGHTEOUS, he will take a deep breath and scream true facts from high atop the nearest available bell tower.
And when his counter legal maneuvering begins, even if it involves suing his beloved Northwestern, an enduring legal maxim will apply:
"Let justice be done though the heavens fall."
Especially to separate his honor from the storm surge on The Enchanted Lakefront.
• Jim O'Donnell's Sports and Media column appears each week on Sunday and Thursday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com. All communications may be considered for publication.